Hilary Ratcliffe, SI’s International Programme Director attended the first SI co-hosted Side Event yesterday taking place at the CSW 58 entitled ‘Solar Cooking: Power to Change Lives’. Here she report back on the event:

"An early start for us
all but not nearly as early as a woman in a rural community in Kenya. She would
generally get up at 4.30 a.m and spend the next few hours doing household chores including collecting the
water and fuel for the stove, cooking, cleaning, washing, attending to the
crops and milking the cows. Eventually going to bed at 11.00p.m ready to do it
all again the next day. I am very lucky that I don’t have to walk to collect water and fuel which
could take up to 3 to 4 hours of my day. It is no wonder many women and girls have
no time to study and go to school.

A solar cooker can
help to ease this problem by taking out the need to collect fuel. It also
provides a clean form of cooking which helps health by not affecting lungs with
charcoal and smoke. It can also be used to pasteurise water and also creates a
safer environment so that women and girls, who ordinarily have to walk into the bush to collect firewood and experience gender violence and harassment don’t have to.

At this side event we were given good
examples of projects in Kenya from Dinah Chiejo, Director of
‘Friends of the Old’ who is

working with elder
women in the Nyakach district in Kenya where 60% are living in absolute poverty. Dinah pointed out very
clearly the benefits to the community of this kind of cooking but also pointed
out that education must take place as it is a different method of cooking and
the women have to be taught how to use it.

This led on very well to a presentation given by Maria Elizabetta di Francisis from Soroptimist
International of Europe who talked about the project developed by the Danish Union
in partnership with 10 clubs in Kenya, which provided LED lamps, solar chargers and fireless cooking stoves to
women in an isolated community in Kenya. The project reduced the use of fossil
fuels and also improved the health of the women and their children.

Julie Green, the
Director of Solar Cookers, delivered a very interesting presentation about the
range and diversity of solar cookers even telling us about some parabolic
cookers being used at the Shirdl temple in India where they are used to cook
100,000 meals a day. She told us  Solar
Cookers have projects in Nepal, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are often used
in refugee camps. When she was asked why they were not partnering with the
United Nations to help with this problem, she said that the type of cooker used
in a refugee camp would have to use a plastic bag to hold in the heat. This was
not publish of by the Agencies so instead they would truck in biomass fuel –more
damaging to the environment than one bag used in the cooking process.

One amazing fact – she
said that the highest per capita use of solar cookers is in Switzerland!

So they can be used
anywhere –a simple technology with huge benefits for the women and girls who
use them.

The side event sets into context SI’s December 10^th
Presidents Appeal “See Solar: Cook Solar” where we really can make an important
difference to the lives of women and girls".

Read more about SI’s activities at the CSW 58